


sometimes a dream isn't worth what you pay

by averita



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Female Friendship, Gen, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 04:37:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3368135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/averita/pseuds/averita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"I always wanted a child," Beth told her once, still half a child herself. Half a child, turning to dust now like the rest of them.<i> Carol in the aftermath of 5A.</i></i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	sometimes a dream isn't worth what you pay

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Dad Says" by Emily Kinney.

Carol always wanted to be a mother.

Sophia was hard-won, the first pregnancy to last past five months. No matter how heavy the weight of the world weighs on her, it will never fill the empty space in her arms where she once cradled the soft, wiggling warmth of her daughter.

She wanted more, dreamed of a house full of childish laughter and crayon marks on the walls. She let herself think, for a moment, that maybe she'd have a chance at that after all - three little blonde girls that would never fill her cracks but might hold them together. 

"I always wanted a child," Beth told her once, still half a child herself. Half a child, turning to dust now like the rest of them.

***

She waits until the door closes before trying to speak, but all she manages is a cough. Beth scrambles from her seat on the floor, hurrying over to grab Carol's hand.

"You're awake," she breathes, eyes wide and relieved. She has cuts on her face and bruises on her arms, but there's a steadiness to her, a fierceness in her face that makes Carol glad. Whatever this place is - whoever that woman was - Beth is surviving here, that much is clear. "It's so good to see you." She hugs Carol carefully, jostling her a little, but Carol doesn't mind. "How did you end up here? I thought I'd never see you again."

"Came to rescue you," Carol rasps, her lips twitching. "Guess I didn't do so well." Beth laughs, a little shaky.

"At least it's not just me anymore," she says. There's a hitch in her voice, one that tells Carol that while she's surviving, it's taking a toll. "How did you find me? Were you with others?"

She cries, a little, when Carol tells her - Maggie, Glenn, Rick, even Judith, all of them safe and waiting at a church. "You were with Daryl?" Beth asks, fingers tightening around Carol's, and returns Carol's nod with a decisive one of her own. "He'll get the others," she says resolutely. "They'll come for us. We'll just have to be ready."

Carol dozes after awhile, sore and drowsy and lulled by the sweet sound of Beth's singing. She remembers her not so long ago, catatonic and hiding knives in her bed - that girl has been burned away, too, she thinks. Consumed. 

She drifts, listening, and hears Daryl's voice in her head. Pictures a pile of ashes, and something bright rising out of them.

***

Losing her sister finally broke Maggie in a way nothing else had. She's a shell, ratty-haired and blank-eyed. A distant part of Carol wants to reach out, but what once came easily feels impossible now - she wonders if there's such a thing as too much empathy, or if maybe she's just broken in a different way. They find a motel and hunker down, while Carol recovers and they wrap their heads around the lie of Washington, and while they let their grief harden inside them.

Daryl hovers from a distance. The first couple of days he is silent but there, right at her side to steady her as she stumbles, and she hates how necessary that is on all counts. Every inch of her aches, and the bruises bloom and wither until she’s as mottled as any Walker. 

“We should go,” she tells Rick on the fourth day. “We can’t just sit here.” Already half the group is restless, and the other half, she thinks, would be far too content to lie down and never get back up.

Rick agrees. He does that these days - listens to her, asks her advice. She isn’t the only one Daryl has pulled away from, and he hasn’t pulled nearly so far from her as the others.

She finds him shortly after on the roof of the firetruck, and his scowl deepens when he sees her making her way up the ladder. She ignores it, but takes the hand he offers. 

"The hell are you doing," he growls, guiding her to the folding chair he's been sitting on. It reminds her of Dale's RV, a little. She pictures Daryl in a white hat and snorts, irritating him further, but after a moment his expression gives way to wariness.

"You don't get to do this," she says at last. "You don't get to bring me back and then quit on me."

He doesn't say anything, just looks away. It pisses her off.

***

__  
_Now and then the runners would bring something back for the kids, now that there were more of them. Coloring books, card games, comic books, a packet of balloons - anything small and easy to slip in a backpack. More often than not Glenn was the bearer of such treats. It was sweet, the way he pretended he didn't love being loved by the little ones._

_This time he'd brought an arts and crafts packet, full of markers and pastels and even a few watercolor palettes, but it was Beth who was the center of attention among the girls. Mika and Lizzie and Molly, even Judith, chewing on her fingers and watching from Carol's lap. Carol herself was taking a break for the first time in days, a sweet sort of heaviness in her chest at the scene before her._

_"Ma'am, you should do yours, too!" Lizzie piped up, admiring her shiny blue fingernails. Carol didn't know how long watercolor paints would last as nail polish, but she had to admit they worked for the moment. Still, she shook her head._

_"You girls should use it. Besides, I don't want Judith to be the only one without fancy nails."_

_Beth smiled at her over Mika's head, fingers deftly braiding the younger girl's hair along the side to frame her face. She was the one who had instigated this impromptu sleepover - complete with nails, hair-styling, and Disney songs - and Carol had a feeling that the young woman had inadvertently created her very own fan club._

_Later, when the girls have drifted off in a pile of sleeping bags, Carol brushed Beth's hair back from her face in an old, familiar gesture. "Sophia always wanted a big sister," she said._

***

The question haunts her like it hasn’t in years.

What if they had been five minutes earlier, or two minutes later. What if she had known better. What if she had taken Lizzie after all, just left, like she nearly did after Terminus - maybe they wouldn’t have made it, but maybe they would have. What if they had? 

What if Lizzie had been normal? She nearly was, sometimes - it was easy to see that little rotten seed in her mind as just that, rotten, something that couldn’t grow and flourish and take control. Easy to imagine that the bright-eyed girl with a wild imagination was just another child, one with enough sharp edges that she might just survive.

What if she hadn’t loved Lizzie, or let Lizzie love her? She tried, truly, to draw lines, and Lizzie tried to respect them, but it didn’t do much good in the end. Lizzie loved too much, and Carol knows now that love has never been enough.

What if - 

“Stop,” Daryl mutters suddenly. 

She jumps, wincing at the motion, and glares at him. “What?”

He taps his fingers restlessly along his crossbow, eyes sweeping across the motel parking lot before meeting hers, and she realizes that she’s been staring into space for God knows how long. A herd could have passed in front of her and she doubts she’d have noticed.

They’re heading out tomorrow. This has to stop. 

Daryl opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything, so she does instead.

“There was a little house in a pecan grove,” she says quietly. And then, the rest.

***

It hurts to carry Judith - her shoulder is still tender - but she offers anyway.

Judith doesn’t have the same baby smell that Sophia did, that clean scent of powder and milk and warm new skin. Judith smells stale, with clothes that grow mustier and more ragged every day; they keep her as clean as they can, but resources are thin, and the sharp scent of antiseptic wipes lingers. 

It doesn’t bother Carol. Very little about this world is sweet and gentle, and she finds herself smiling as Judith babbles and shoves her fist in her mouth. 

Being on the road again is hard. They haven’t met anyone yet, but everyone is on guard - everyone except Maggie, who seems to see nothing, not even Glenn. Daryl is still withdrawn, still spends a good deal of time hunting by himself, but he’s trying, same as her, and she can be patient.

Judith won’t grow up like Sophia, and that makes Carol ache, a little. She’ll never eat fresh baked cookies, experiment with make-up, play sports at school, or be comforted by her mother at the end of a bad day. Her world is one of the walking dead, weapons and scavenging, never staying long and never trusting anyone.

She won’t grow up like Sophia, or Beth, or Mika or Lizzie, or any of the others they have lost, but Carol has to hope that means that she’ll _grow up_. 

It hurts to hope, but she does it anyway.


End file.
